Despite some guarded optimism about the economy in general, public companies are still caught in a pressure cooker over the question of whether they can continue as a going concern.
Early data suggests that the raw number of companies with a going-concern warning attached to their 2009 audit opinion will decline slightly from the highs of 2007 and 2008, but that doesn’t necessarily mean companies will be healthier from here forward, says Don Whalen, director of research for Audit Analytics. “Most of the drop experienced in 2009 will be more because of attrition than because of an increase in company performance,” ...